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"FUCK!" Maria was not above swearing, but not usually that loud and almost never in the middle of a gym rapidly filling with patrons. But crashing into a pile of crash pads for the 12th time in a row trying to do her own signature move was starting to get to her. "AGAIN!" She jumped up to her feet and leapt to the top rope of the ring once more.
"Maria no..." Eddie Alvarez could not even get the entirety of his instruction out before Maria jumped again; her attempts to twist her body in order to pull off the fabled Phoenix Splash this time resulting in falling onto the crash pads back first. Before Maria could go fully manic Eddie rushed through the pads to physically restrain her. "Maria, Maria...deep breaths." Maria struggled against him and despite his own impressive physique he could barely keep her restrained. She was only 17 and had his height and an even more impressive build. Which was part of the problem.
Maria finally relaxed and exhaled. "Damn it. I know *how* to do it, why can't I *do* it?"
"Because you are putting the cart ahead of the horse Maria. Have you been incorporating the core exercises I've been teaching you into your workout?"
"Yes."
"And have you been laying off the weights and slimming down a bit?"
"...yes." Maria couldn't stand to lie to her big brother's face "..no. I'm sorry. It's just. I wanna do it all! I wanna hit and lift and fly. Except mat wrestle. That's for nerds. And Gloria....who is kind of a nerd."
"Oh she kinda is yeah." Eddie giggled a bit. "But ok, enough splashing today. Let's work on your power moves if you wanna do them so bad. Have you decided on what kind of power bomb you want to use?"
"All of them"
"Sister, wrestling is about communication. Your opponent needs to know what you're going to do to them. If you tell them 'powerbomb' they need to know exactly how to bend. That's why most wrestlers don't do more than...hold up holdup." Eddie stopped mid-sentence as he noticed their mother making their way through the sea of chairs towards the ring. Behind her was a girl he had never seen before. She was quite short by his estimation and seemed extremely thin to boot, with almost no definition on her arms, one of which was holding the other in a staple posture exhibited by people who don't really want to be seen.
Maria looked on confused at this disruption. "Ma who is..." Alexis didn't recognize the scrawny bald girl in all black. Not until she saw her pierced lips, nose and ears. "O?"
The girl called 'O' by Maria lifted her head. It was not a look she recognized on O's face ever. It was one of fear.
"O?" Eddie looked on in confusion? "Ma who is this?"
"*This* is apparently one of Maria's old partners in Team Power. The one I never met. Maria, does this ragamuffin look familiar to you?" Maria's mother presented 'O' with a combination of concern and skepticism.
"O!" Maria lept out of the ring and ran up to O as if to hug her, then promptly remembered better.
A weak "Hi" was all she could get out as her eyes slumped to the ground again. Maria was starting to get worried. This was not the O she knew. The O she knew wasn't scared like this, she was scary. She was brazen and crude....kinda violent sometimes.
"So you know her?" Maria's mother lowered her guard slightly.
"Yes yes Ma, this is Power Weapon, the one and only."
Gail Alvarez's eyes perked up a little as she finally got to meet the last of her baby's surrogate sisters. "Power Weapon! Such a name. What do you want me to call you again? O? is O short for something?"
Maria tried to subtly wave her mother off of asking that. Nothing good ever came out of asking O about her first name. This could get ugly in a hurry.
"I don't wanna talk about it." She weakly replied. And Maria's anxiety started to skyrocket. This was not O. This was not Power weapon. The name question was always something that invited a fight, not...that. Maria was almost starting to wish she had tried to pick a fight.
"Good enough for me dumplin'. So why you coming here now after all these years? Why you such a stranger?"
"I...need..." O looked as if she trying to rip the words off her tongue. She stuttered, then paused and started pressing her palms to her eyes while shaking 'no...no...no' she whispered, but not as softly as she would have preferred.
"O, are you ok." Maria knew the answer was no, but she needed to see if O knew.
O was able to keep it together long enough to utter one request.
"Can we...talk in private?"
"Take her to your room luv, I'll stay out here and go over some things with Eddie." Ma didn't need some kind of maternal instinct to know that the girl she just met was in dire need of help. And if help at this moment in time meant reconnecting with her old teammate, well that was just none of her business. At first she thought this girl might mean her baby harm but this girl...can't harm anybody right now.
Worn posters of Lucha of eras past adorned the wall, well-worn clothes adorned the floor as Maria led O to her unmade queen-sized bed. O sat down, head in hands as Maria sat down with her, but not too close. O was always touchy of touching.
"So um...this is my room. Forgive the mess. It's always this way." Maria tried to bring a little levity to the situation, but even she wasn't amused. "O, can you please tell me what's up?"
O struggled to make eye contact. "I need help Maria" she said as she pressed her palms to her eyes again and her finger scratched her bald head as if looking for a patch of loose hair to rip out.
Maria was taken aback by the request. The O she knew would get pissed off if you picked up her books for her if she dropped them. "What kind of help?"
"I...I don't know. Ok. I don't know. I don't know anything!" O was starting to get animated.
"I will do what I can to help you O but I have to know what's wrong first."
"I...I'm having trouble." Maria silently nodded at this revelation. "With everything! I've been trying to hold down a job but I keep getting fired either because I'm stupid or I'm weak. I'm living at the shelter trying to figure out what to do next but this fucking city doesn't make any sense to me."
"Oh no O, that's horrible. What do you mean no sense"
"I've...I've never been a part of the city before. Not as a human. Not really." Maria looked bewildered at what O just said. "The city is confusing to me. Being a magical girl is the only thing I EVER knew. It's the only thing I was ever taught to be. And now that I'm not anymore...I'm no good for anything else."
"I'm sure that that isn't true."
"It IS! Look...look at my fucking arms!" O presented her scrawny right arm to Maria "It's just skin and fucking bone. It's nothing without magic backing it up. I tried getting a job stocking shelves and I couldn't hack it. I'm practically decrepit. I didn't even realize it in high school but thinking back even my bag was pretty heavy. I just thought it was normal. I'd have to stop and catch my breath just walking from school to the dorm."
Maria was aghast. She never thought of O as a specimen of physical health but she always project such a...badass aura that she never actually looked at her and saw how frail she actually was.
"O...what happened? Why are you so out of shape?"
O was struggling, her palms again went against her head and she started hyperventilating.
"Please be calm. I'm not judging."
"...I was never allowed."
"Allowed to what?"
"Exercise."
Maria was intensely confused by this statement.
"What?"
O still had her hands to her eyes, but judging by how the next words came out Maria knew why.
"I'll tell you mantra they used. The...the...ves...vessel of...the...fou.." she paused. She couldn't go on. Maria didn't know how to reply. "THEY WANTED ME AS WEAK AND STUPID AS POSSIBLE MARIA!"
"What on earth? Who?"
"The people who made me! My parents if you need to fucking call them that!"
It was time for Maria to swear again "Your parents wanted you weak and stupid?"
O took several deep breaths and spoke, each word came out with extreme deliberation "The matra is "The Vessel of the Founder's Strength Must Be Bereft of All But His Glory". Please don't ever make me repeat that phrase"
"What does it mean?" A pit of dread dropped into Maria's stomach. O never, ever, talked about her childhood. She knew she in the process of learning why. And she knew she would not enjoy it.
"I was not to walk if it was not necessary to do so. Because building physical strength would have left less room for the light of the founder. I was not to read, not to learn, except for scripture, as building intelligence would have left less room for the light of the founder. I was not to form bonds, as I belonged to the founder alone. It was all part of their grand fucking plan."
"Holy shit." Maria really did not know how else to reply.
"My birth served one purpose; I was to become the savior of the city. The most powerful magical girl to have ever existed. The vessel of the full power of the founder. Destroy the monsters once and for all and be the beacon for the bright new future of humanity. Everything in my life revolved around that goal. I barely knew anything outside of where I lived. The people who created me...were sick. Fucking fanatical..." O's voice started to break..."Fucking, fuck fuck..Foundationists who didn't love anything in this world except their precious fucking founder and insane plan to turn me into some kind of mortal goddess." O hadn't take her palms out of her eyes this whole time. It was started to not to matter. Maria could see it leaking out of the edges. She pretended to not notice. But O could tell and got up off the bed. "Where is the bathroom?"
"In the hallway between the Kitchen and the Living Room."
O silently made her way there. 5 minutes passed...then 10. Maria was starting to worry. She decided to get up and check on her. She was about to knocked but she could hear it through the door...sobbing.
"O, are you ok?"
O opened the door, her eyes swollen with a storm of tears, a trail of mostly-wiped away mucosa persisted under her reddened nose.
"It won't stop Maria, why won't it stoooop?" O could no longer enunciate between sobs. She started violently brushing her eyes with her forearms. "FUCKING! STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT!" her efforts to stop the wellspring grew increasingly frantic, she was practically clawing at her as if trying to rip her own eyes out to stop the tears. Maria knew she had to do something that a year ago she never would dared to do.
She hugged O. She didn't know if O wanted to be hugged or even if, strictly speaking she needed the hug. But she knew she had to restrain O's arms before she hurt herself and this seemed like a pretty good way to do it.
"AAARGH DAMMIT DON'T TOUCH ME!" O screamed. Maria did not want this to be a traumatic event for O, but she also didn't want O to rip her own face off.
"Ok O, ok" She released the hug but not before grasping O's wrists. "Ok O, ok. I'm sorry. I should not have done that. But please don't hurt yourself ok." Maria released O's wrists and thankfully she did not resume her frenzied attempt to stuff her feelings back into her eye sockets.
"I can't deal with this Maria. I can't." O sat on the toilet. Her frenzy may have subsided but her tears did not. Maria presented O with a roll of toilet paper. O grabbed a clump, dappled her eyes and blew her nose. "Why can't I stop crying?"
"I think maybe...maybe you're crying a lifetime of tears all at once. I think. You can probably answer that question better than I can."
"I don't...I don't know. I'm tired Maria. I can't think of anything else to say right now. I'm tired."
"You probably haven't had a good night's sleep in a month. Take a nap in my bed. We'll talk more when you're rested ok?"
"In your bed? I can just sleep on the couch. I've been sleeping on a lot of couches."
"That's why you're so tired. You sleep in my bed ok." Maria watched as O got up off the toilet.
"It doesn't feel right."
"You're right O. Not about that though. You need help. This is what help is." Maria steered O into her room and all but tucked her worn out comrade in. O offered no more complaint.
Maria closed the door and went back into the gym, but not before waiting a minute in the hallway and going back into the house to make sure O didn't slip out of bed and lie on the couch immediately after she left. Content that she didn't, she left to talk with her family.
Eddie and Gail were talking about things related to the company. She couldn't make out the details but could grasp they were talking about their cousin Cecil. He was the biggest rudo in the company and longtime rival of Eddie. Cecil wanted to turn technico because he thought he could sell more merch that way. Her mother stopped the conversation cold when she saw Maria.
"What is it Maria? What is wrong with her?" Gail asked with a combination of genuine concern mixed with a layer of lingering skepticism. The combination of never meeting her plus Maria's stories about her gave her a not-entirely unfair amount of distrust in her. Like the black sheep of the collective family.
"She needs help."
"What kind of help?"
"I think...all of it. Whatever we can offer. She's homeless Ma. Homeless, unwell and struggling out there. She's sleeping in my room right now. Hopefully I'll get a better picture when she wakes up."
"Oh my goodness. Isn't the city helping her? Are they just going to leave a former magical girl to twist in the wind."
"I don't know Ma. There's a lot I don't know right now." Maria said. Just thinking that that shaking, sobbing...child in her bed right now was once Power Weapon made her own eyes well up. She had no way to parse this. Did Candi know what's happening? Did she go to her first? Does Candi know? She needed to tell her. Maria knew she had the number to Candi's dorm...somewhere in her trashed room. She didn't want to root around for it while O was sleeping in her bed. Beside, maybe O didn't want Candi to know. Why didn't she go to her first? They were always the closest. Maria was kind of a 3rd wheel in terms of interpersonal dynamics in the group and she knew it. Did Candi already refuse her? No way. Impossible. Not Candi. She had the biggest heart of anybody she knew. She was so sweet her mom thought she was kinda fake. And she did come off that way if you didn't know better. Nobody could actually be that pure and kindhearted and saccharine. Well guess what? Candi is. But for all that the only people Candi ever seemed to be truly close to was her and O. And even Maria knew Candi wasn't as close to her as she was to O. If Candi hasn't seen O in all this time she must be going crazy. There's just no way she'd reject her. Was she ashamed? That seemed more likely. She was definitely ashamed of herself right now. She probably doesn't want Candi to see her like this. Maria realized that as much as Candi needed to know about this it wasn't her place to tell her about it.
"Maria honey you ok?" Gail's concern snapped her out of her own head.
"Just thinking of things. My world's been turned upside down right now."
"How's your world turned upside-down?"
"O is sort of a role-model Ma. She was just so...badass. And fearless. They should have made movies about her. The school was frightened of her. Even the City was scared of her. And that...that isn't her. Or maybe it is her and I never met the real her. I'm not even sure O has ever met the real her. The situation's fucked up ma."
"LANGUAGE!"
"Sorry ma. Messed up. She needs help. I just know that much."
"We will not turn your sister away Maria. I do not know her but she is my daughter all the same. We won't let her be homeless."
"Thanks ma."
"That's Power Weapon? From what I heard I didn't expect her to be so puny." Eddie decided to chime in.
"How do you know about her? We didn't do very many interviews."
"No, but I have all the ones you did saved at home." Even though she was Maria's brother, 14 years separated them. They really didn't know each other as people until he started training her. At the time her sister Gloria told her that Eddie would love the chance to get to know his youngest sister. Maria silently marveled at how right she was. "In those she just looked and sounded so tough. I couldn't imagine my baby sister keeping such rough company but then I see her...she's 100lbs soaking wet."
Maria snapped back to what O told her about her childhood.
"That's its own pile of bull..." Maria realized her mom was listening '...poop'
Eddie had an epiphany. "Wait Ma, you ain't rented out my old apartment yet have you?"
"No because you never cleared your crap out like you said you would."
"I've been busy Ma."
"Yeah yeah, everbody's busy. What if I had a renter?"
"Have you?"
"That's not the point."
"But ok this works out." Eddie sounded pleased that his negligence was about to yield positive results. Maria just liked having somebody around who left bigger messes than her. "I left a bunch of my old furniture in there. Bed, tables, a couch. Even a TV when I got a bunch of new stuff for my new place. Just move her in there."
Gail pinched her biggest boys' cheeks. "Ooooh it is so good of you to leave that apartment trashed for a year so Maria's friend could live there" Gail was being sarcastic, but was still happy with her son for thinking of it. Even if it was self-serving.
Eddie looked embarrassed, the wrestlers who were taking their turn practicing in the ring stopped and stared. As did several other gymgoers "Maaaa my public."
"Your public can see your Mama give you a big kiss!" Gail pulled Eddie's head down and gave him a big kiss on the forehead.
"Ok ok. Maria. As you can see Victor and Inez need the ring right now so let's go upstairs. I want to see you doing your core flexibility exercises for myself to make sure you're doing them right."
"Don't push her too hard. She has homework!"
Maria would finish her routine with her brother, eat dinner, do her homework, go out on patrol and get back before O would wake up.
Maria came home to a note on the fridge as she often did. "Empanadas are in the fridge. Love you ~Mama" Maria saw there was another line. "PS, Eddie forgot to give you the key to his old apartment. O hasn't woken up yet. Give this to her when she does. Love you ~Mama" Below that a single key was taped to the note. Maria removed it and stuck it in her pocket. Her thoughts raced to O.
"Wow she hasn't woken up, I hope she's ok." Maria said as she opened the door to her bedroom to check on her. She turned on the light to make sure she hadn't escaped into the night at some point. She hadn't. In fact her eyes were open.
"How was monsters?" She asked, surprisingly animated for somebody who just woke up.
"Paper used Explosion Witch's powers. Long story short she is not allowed to use that card again."
"You ok?"
"Had to visit a healer. Mostly for them though."
"How has she not gotten you killed yet?"
"She's good...usually. When she doesn't get a new power she has no idea how to use. But enough about Paper. How are you?"
"I've been laying here for awhile not sure what to do with myself." O threw the blankets off of her and sat upwards.
"Right now or in general?" Maria really hoped O would not answer 'yes'
"Yes."
Dammit
"Well there's some good news. Turns out my brother left a bunch of his stuff in one of the apartments." Maria fished the key out of her pocket. "It's yours now."
O looked at the key like it was the most miraculous thing she ever gazed upon in her life. "No way. No fucking way. I don't deserve this." Tears began to well up in her eyes again.
"You deserve more than this. You fought for this city. You endured things most people can't imagine. The idea that you're homeless and jobless is...it's bullshit O. Just bullshit."
"No Maria. I'm a failure."
Maria could not possible be more exasperated. "How can you even think that?"
"I was supposed to be the savior. I was supposed to save us all."
"According to your insane parents."
"Makers."
"Is that what you call them?"
The tears weren't a flood but a gentle stream. "Yes. Parents are supposed to love you and raise you to be a person. They tried to 'make' me into a 'vessel'. A glorified jar. They were no parents."
"Then that's what I will call them. But that's something your makers put on you. It was unreasonable. Impossible."
"It's all I knew. It's all I was taught to be and prepared to be. Even once I stopped giving a shit what they thought of me...I just...I dunno. It still..." O stammered and stuttered, unable to finish the sentence. Maria got the idea nonetheless
"You need to stop that right now. Your makers were awful. Please don't let them define you."
"Can I have a tissue or something. My face is on its bullshit again." O was calm this time. Maria hoped she made her peace with the fact that she had to cry as she went to the bathroom to fetch toilet paper. "Thanks. I mean I know. Being defined by my makers is the last thing I wanted. When I was emancipated, the first things I did were to try to undo everything they put into me. They never wanted me to wear makeup; I slathered myself in it. No body markings. I got this." O rolled up her sleeve to reveal a tattoo that resembled the Mark of the Founder; A circle within a larger circle with a three-pronged star beneath. But it was inverted. The star on top, it's bottom skewer piercing the outer circle and puncturing the one within, like somebody broke the symbol in half and stabbed the top half with the bottom half. Maria knew it because it was emblazoned on her magical girl outfit but never saw where it was on her body.
"You got a tattoo of your sigil?"
"my sigil was originally on this side." O rolled up her other sleeve revealing the same tattoo, this one the same color of dark purple as the streaks in her hair back when she had hair. "It seemed lonely. Also I wanted to scar my body." Maria was hoping this was the only way she did that.
"You got a tattoo of your sigil over your sigil?"
"I got this with my first paycheck of my first job. Thought I could hold a fucking job. Dammit! Fucking STUPID!" Maria decided to simply let her continue this time "That wasn't enough so I got pierced everywhere I could get pierced." That was always difficult to ignore. O had a total of 10 piercings. 4 on her lips, 2 in her nose and 4 in her ears, all symmetrical. "13 times." She continued. "And my HAIR! My fucking HAIR! Do you have any fucking clue how anal my makers were about my HAIR! They put more effort into making sure my hair was perfect that anything else. They had this weird compulsion that the Founder favored mid-back length, blonde, voluminous hair and meticulously made sure it stayed that way. My transformation took care of half of it. And I sheared it down to neck length the first chance I got. I had to fucking shave it because I can't afford hair dye and I will NEVER have yellow hair on my head again" O paused to apply tissue. "They wanted me empty so I even tried to fill myself with knowledge and physical strength." Maria wanted to ask why but was sure O would answer. "But I couldn't do it. Do you know I couldn't actually go to classes in Future's Promise for 2 months after I was sorted out with enrollment and registration and set up in the dorm?" It was a rhetorical question; O never shared anything about herself. That's she doing so now so freely...Maria was a mix of horrified and relieved. It's obvious she needed to do this for a long time and now...even if she's not comfortable per se it's obvious she could no longer keep it in. "Do you know why? I couldn't do math. AT ALL! I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT A PLUS SIGN WAS! That's how stupid I was! There was talk of having me start school at the beginning. But I couldn't. I refused. I couldn't be in class with the fucking babies Maria. Maybe I should have. But I needed to have a tutor to tutor me in basic math for 2 months until they felt I was ready enough to attend remedial classes at FP." Maria continued to say nothing, there was nothing to say. "SAY SOMETHING DAMMIT!" O clearly started to feel that Maria was leaving the conversation.
"O, believe me I am listening. But I can't really say anything that isn't just me repeating how completely wrong your life was."
"Just...if that's all you can say, please say that." O blew her nose.
"I will. You don't even have to go on if you don't want to. Just know I am here for whatever you need to do right now."
"Ok...I wasn't ready. For anything. Except English. They taught me how to read and write even though everything I read and wrote was related to Foundationist scripture. I did alright in English. I eventually came around a little in history because there was stuff in it that I learned in the scriptures. Everything else though. All remedial classes. Lots and lots of F's. Lots of repeating classes. I'm not actually sure if I actually graduated or if they just gave me the fucking diploma because I powered out. I studied, believe it or not. More than people thought. I wanted to learn things just to spite my makers but it was so hard, I was so far behind I could never catch up and eventually I kinda stopped trying and focused on what made sense to me."
"What made sense."
"Fighting, being a magical girl. The world only made sense 4 hours a day. I fought. I kicked ass. When I bled. I laughed. When I thought I'd die; I'd wonder if there were any black flowers they could plant on my grave. I wasn't a savior but I was at least a magical girl. The only thing I was ever supposed to be. I'm not Omnipotence Smith! I'm fucking Power Weapon! And now I'm not that anymore. I don't know how to be..." O seemed to realize what she just said. "O Smith."
"O, is that your name? Omnipot..."
"Not another fucking syllable Maria." O sounded more like the old Power Weapon as she aggressively stopped the word from escaping Maria's lips. "But yeah. That's what they called me. Fucking "Omnipotence". I figured it out. My makers figured out that some magical girls get powers that fit their names. You know like how 'Candi' had candy powers? My makers wanted me to be fucking all-powerful so they called me fucking Omnipotence. That's not a name a person has Maria! I was going to change it but I don't know how."
"I think there's a registry at city hall that handles name changes." Maria thought for a moment. "What do you want to name yourself?"
"Ugh...red tape. Probably have a fee attached that I can't fucking pay."
"O...I'm starting to find myself with quite a bit of money now from endorsements. I will absolutely give you money to do that."
"WHY? Why the fuck are you being so helpful. I don't understand."
"I don't know. It just feels natural. I see you there and I see somebody who needs help. Somebody I'm very close to."
"What if I told you we only recruited you because you seemed useful?"
"I wouldn't care. I know we didn't exactly become sisters. I mean not like you imagine sisters being. But I still felt close to you O. Whether you understand it or like it or not. Whether you feel like you just used me; I consider you my sister."
"I'm using you even now!"
"Needing help is not using people. You needed my help on the streets. You need my help now. It's ok to need help! For fuck's sake even if you can't understand it please try to accept it!"
O paused for a second..."I'll try." She paused again. "And it's Olivia. The name I want. It's the name of a person."
"Can I call you Olivia?"
"Yes."
"It can still be your name even if it isn't on a piece of paper."
The newly christened Olivia went quiet. "ok." Another pause. "I tried to work out. I went to the gym, found the heaviest weight I could find and..."
"You didn't hurt yourself did you?"
"Shoulder strain. Couldn't budge it for all my effort. Gave up after that. Actually I transformed, empowered the weight, and threw it through the drywall." Maria remembered hearing about that. "Again, I could only focus on fighting. Thought I was strong enough transformed. That that was good enough. But now I'm just weak."
"We will fix that. One baby step at a time. Ok?"
"I'll try. But yeah; weak and stupid. Just as my makers wanted. Except for the part where I became such I perfect magical girl that I didn't need anything else."
Another pause ensued. One long enough that Maria knew she had to speak.
"Just because you're not the perfect magical girl or whatever that means doesn't mean you're worthless"
"They didn't agree. It took me until a few weeks after my 13th birthday to get the dream. My makers saw my black streaked hair and my sigil and looked at me like I was an overflowing dumpster."
"What?!" Maria wasn't actually surprised but the cruelty of Olivia's parents never failed to elicit that response.
"They mostly ignored me. I could see the scorn and disappointment in their eyes. but by that point I loved it. I spent my whole life to that point just...scared of their disapproval more than anything. Scared and hoping that I would become everything they wanted me to be so they would...I dunno, love me or something. Their approval was the only thing I really knew how to seek. But my dream gave me more than powers...it gave me 'power'. To see what a sham my life was. To see my makers as the monsters they truly were. For the first time I didn't fear them. I didn't give a shit what they thought of me. More than that, just things of what they put me through made me angry. At them. At the world that let them get away with this...everything."
Maria couldn't help it. She asked a question she knew she should not have asked. "What happened to them?"
Olivia took a long pause at this; as if she was struggling to find the words. "A week after my transformation they ran errands together. They had never left me alone in the house before. So I decided to snoop. I don't know what I was looking for, I just knew I wanted to do something they didn't want me to do. And I found something...they had journals. Like, they were measuring my progress all my life like I was livestock. But then I found two things...fucking..."
"You don't have to."
"I'm not gonna. Not this. It's too sick. Just know it's sick and disgusting and it make me realize I had to leave. I barely knew anything but I knew I had to leave."
"Ok, I won't pry. So you just left?"
"I had to. I was patrolling away from my apartment that night. I came home and there was a barrier breach. Magical girls were on the scene. My makers were dead. Torn apart by whatever broke in. They helped me. Told me to register, to get in contact with the CDD. So i did. And that set everything into motion. I didn't cry. Not then. There was just a feeling that my real life had begun."
"Madre..."
"I guess that's it. I guess you're my therapist."
Maria had to say it. "I think you might need a better one."
"You gonna pay for that too."
"I don't think I'll have to. I'll get you in touch with M.A.G.I.C.S. at least." Maria was referring to "Magical Adult Girl Intervention, Counseling and Support", a charity for helping magical girls who are struggling after losing their powers adapt to post magical girl life.
"The CDD mentioned it when I was getting my shit ready to leave the dorm. I didn't listen. Stupid fucking me." Olivia had started to calm down. "Couldn't believe there was an whole institute out there that just fucking...helps people."
"There is Olivia, there is." Maria waited for Olivia to talk more. She waited longer than she anticipated.
"Maria...I don't know how I'll ever square this debt."
"Olivia...when you met me I was patrolling alone on the streets. I didn't want to be alone. I wanted comrades, sisters. You gave that to me and I will forever be grateful even if you think you were just using me."
"Ok.." Olivia was hit with a bolt of realization. "Shit, you need to sleep. You have school in the morning."
"No I don't. Fuck school right now. You're more important. See, I'm not the best student either.
Olivia offered a chuckle. "Ok...I know I have my own apartment now or anything but I'm not ready to deal with that yet. Can I just stay here tonight?" Olivia was still not ready to admit she, for once in her life, did not want to be alone.
"Of course. Wanna watch a movie?"
"Yes."
The hours until dawn came slowly as two lives, changed forever, watched "The Triumphs of Crimson Blaze" in their own little Sleepless Domain.